Is happiness a choice?

Question

Is happiness a choice?

Answer

Having been treated for depression over the course of months by a series of three different therapists, I firmly believe that happiness and misery are choices.brbrObviously we have little or no control over what happens in our lives and most of us will have a lot of good things and a lot of bad things happen to us while were on this planet. How we choose to react to them is up to us.brbrFor a long time I didnt believe or realise that I could choose to see things in different ways but my third therapist believed that our mind works in an interesting way like us, it builds up habits that it likes to use. He called these habits pathways. brbrHe explained to me that our mind tends to react to situations in the same way as it has reacted before.brbrHe said that my mind was like a huge field, and when I experience something, my mind has to decide whether to interpret that event as something that is positive or something that is negative.brbrFor me, while I was depressed, the huge field had just one path going through it to a gate on the other side, a deeplytrodden path that suggested that bad things always happened to me. Either side of that miserable path were high brambles and stinging plants that made it very hard for me to think in any positive way.brbrHe said that I had to shut the gate on the other side of the field and beat a new path across the field to another gate and that this path would be my happiness path.brbrTo start with I found this extremely difficult when something bad happened to me, I had to force myself to think that it wasnt my fault or proof that I was an idiot but just life. And when something good happened to me, I had to force myself not to look for the negatives, something Id always always done.brbrIt felt really fake at first but after a few weeks and months, it started to become natural the new path across the field became the one that my mind naturally chose, while the old, negative path started to grow over with brambles and big plants.brbrI really really believe we are in control of our happiness and our outlook on life. It is a liberating prospect and one that has improved my life fold.brbrI thoroughly recommend Lifting the Lid on Depression by Chris Scott and Tomas Woodbridge and Happiness Lessons from a New Science by Richard Layard.brbrGood luck!